One More to Cross Off the List: Bistrot Lafayette in Old Town Alexandria

While we’re on the subject of food, one of my old standbys used to be Bistrot Lafeyette in Old Town Alexandria. It wasn’t great and certainly never innovative, but a very reliable French bistro serving classic dishes. It also wasn’t high end, the escargot would be from a can, but you’d always get exactly what you expected.

A couple of weeks ago I went back. It had been awhile, because the place had seemed to deteriorate the previous time I was in and I was in no rush to return. And I was really disappointed by what I found.

No more baguettes, just hard rolls.

The french onion soup had a piece of white bread on top. White bread.

The hanger steak with fries used to be one of my favorites, with fries that were just incredible. They changed the sauce on the steak not so much to my liking but the fries were truly inexcusable: they actually served the crisscut fries, limp, that tasted as though they were frozen from the back at the supermarket.

I mentioned this last item to the server who just said “yeah, the fries are different” and that was that. It used to be one of my favorite weekned lunch spots, or a reliable place to pop into after work on a Friday night. Now I doubt I’ll be back.

More From View from the Wing

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

Comments

There’s nothing worse than an old favorite restaurant going down the tubes. In the small town where I grew up, there was a great little place that we went to weekly at least. Nothing fancy, kind of “bar food” type things but man, their burgers were killer, home made steak fries, etc. Then the owner decided to get fancy and it went downhill with ridiculous menu items and cutting corners on quality.

clueless help
lack of ownership support and mangement concern add up to many a closed out of business establishment
one lives dies by knowing how to please the customer
sounds like a new cook or ownership how sad 🙁
Next! The highway is littered with broken dreams and restaurants without a destination driving product worth returning for.If I was in your shoes I would give a call to the owner and or manager and find out what happened
You made my mouth water with the former

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.

Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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